Here’s a really good site I found on English dialects: International Dialects of English Archive. You got everything there from South African to Yorkshire accents, to the oral histories of 80+ year old Holocaust survivors.

If you’ve been looking for something to teach you the various english accents of the world, you can do a whole lot worse than this place. I heartily reccomend it. I spent hours here listening to various speakers, it’s fascinating.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go practice my Welsh so I can pretend to be Christian Bale’s cousin.

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If you saw the live cam with Mark and Chris during the Oscars, then man, what fun you missed out on. Those two are seriously goof balls, and I pity anyone who missed Chris butchering the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Ramones, and Sabbath. And Mark mocking the awards were funny too; the “Methusulah” comment inspired a giggle. There was a point where the show became so boring we (all three of us chatting) were watching the two guys playing “Rock Star” more than the actual show.

Anyway, you have to appreciate the weirdness of the Oscar Ceremony this year. And since I like to categorize and list everything:

Weirdest moment/s:
Everyone tripping going to the podium. Am I the only one who noticed everyone slipping a little on the way up to the stage?

Oddest presentor:
Miley Cyrus? For a second I was wondering if I was completely off. Was she nominated? Was she performing a song? Nah, she was just there to gauge the young audiences and ratings. Enjoy the moment, you won’t be there for “Best of Both Worlds.”

Moment of the night:
Host Stewart insisted it was Bardem, but when he called Markéta Irglová back up to the podium to give her speech after being very rudely interrupted during the acceptance speech for “Falling Slowly”? Well sir, that was the best moment of the night, and classy all the way. I still say if they cut down the montages, they could have longer acceptance speeches and people like Marketa could have their moment. And “Falling Slowly” deserved the win. That song gets me every time.

Having More Fun than We Were?
Amy Adams. Did it seem this woman was having much more fun than we were the entire time? She seemed very giggly and bubbly. Maybe it’s because she was probably back stage drinking the whole time. And Jon Stewart was great this year. Sardonic, graceful, and funny. He was much better than safe inoffensive Ellen Degeneres.

Best feigning of interest:
Barbara Walters during her annual pre-awards special interviewing Miley Cyrus. The girl rambled on and on and on, and Walters persisted with her interested nod. Good for her. Why was she so important? Oh right… ratings.

Shocker:
Marion Cotillard for Best Actress. Granted, she was good, but I really expected Julie Christie to win. I also voted for Ellen Page, which was a long shot, but still, there’s always hope. It’s not your time yet doll face, you’ll get there. Chris Gore was probably being sarcastic, but I voted for her too, man.

Final Tally:
Only a few good guesses this year as always. I lied, I know, but hey, I thought I had it all pegged and voted on what I felt the Academy would peg, and while it was off to a good start, it all went downhill. Though I did call the final categories.

Montages:
I hate them. I hate them in movies. I hate them in awards shows. Montages of the best actress winners of all time before presenting best actress. Right, that’s with a point. Cut the number down to two or three and be done with it. However the spoofing of meaningless montages that went on to the typical meaningless montages was a great bit of irony.

Obvious but…
Diablo Cody’s acceptance speech. Sorry, but the woman is pretty damn good looking even if her writing is hit or miss. We all saw it coming.

Well deserved:
Javier Bardem, the Coen Brothers, No Country, Daniel Day Lewis.

Final Word:
This is honestly the first time in years I lost patience in the halfway mark and began getting angry. I was bored. Not as bored as last year, but bored still. I bitch, but I’ll be watching next year. And you will too, just to say it sucked and pretend you’re above it. Don’t pretend.

Until next year…

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I made a decision this year, I’m not even trying to guess who will win at the Oscars.

Because, I’ll just call a duck a duck and say that when it comes to guessing winners, I suck. Six times I tried that Oscar sweepstakes shit, and I lost all six times. I only made it out with three or four right guesses, last year.

This year I’ll have some Diet Pepsi, chips, and watch in my beach chair hoping to see some Ellen Page goodness, anxiously awaiting “Falling Slowly,” praying we don’t get those weird contortionists making shapes between presentations, and hoping “Juno” wins one of the bigger awards. I know, it won’t, but still, there’s hope.

Now sure, scoff, but I like the Oscars. It’s a fun night, and you may pretend to be above it, but you’ll see it, you know you will. Just so you can pretend you were above it the whole four hours, and then mock the ceremony. It will happen, don’t lie.

It’ll also be sad to see another ceremony without Roger Ebert; all the best to him.
I’ll be on Film Threat Sunday chatting along with some of the regular staff members on the boards, so be there and join in if ye want. So, rather than even attempting to guess the winners, I’ll instead make a list of ten things I hope to see during the Oscar ceremony, so…
Here’s what I’m hoping to see:

1. Depp is so angered at Day Lewis winning, the two get into a sword fight in the crowd.
2. Page, so annoyed that she lost “Best Actress” to Julie Christie, jumps up and screams, “Oh come on, she won’t even be alive in two years!”
3. The beautiful “Falling Slowly” is sung by David Alan Grier and Nathan Lane.
4. Daniel Day Lewis comes dressed as Daniel Plainview and even sports his Sean Connery accent sneering wickedly throughout the ceremony with a small boy standing beside him the entire time.
5. Smug that he stole the Best Actor Oscar from Day-Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, with a smile, proclaims, “Nayw, Ah Drink Your Milkshake!”
6. Someone at sometime will say “Friend-O.” This seems more likely to happen.
7. Saoirse Ronan’s name is completely mispronounced in variations of Source, Sears, Soars, and Sershey.
8. While presenting with Marion Cotillard, Charlize Theron asks “Are you related to my maid?”
9. While accepting his award for “Sicko,” Michael Moore goes on a rant about the poor US Healthcare and begins to weep when he sees that the audience agrees with him and cheers him on.
10. In an attempt to liven things up, all the presentors have to drop down a large slide to the podium. Even Ruby Dee.

So See you Sunday!

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For all you folks who belittle the Oscars and plan to do something other than sit and watch the red carpet wankathon, by all means, enjoy the words of my favorite comedian of all time:

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In all honesty, I could base the entire column on Wes Craven movies as I’ve been able to watch a lot of my favorites from the director and mostly all of them have aged incredibly poorly and will probably continue to, until they’re remade so much we’ll forget who Craven is. But that little jab aside:

As a child “The Willies” was pretty much as horrifying as it got. As an eleven year old it was a disgusting, creepy, and horrifying little anthology horror film with some gruesome special effects. And it was also a childhood favorite, a film I saw over and over further feeding my lust for horror.

And eighteen years later… it still has great sentimental value, it’s still a movie I’ll always appreciate as a favorite of a simpler time but… yeah, it pretty much sucks. Badly. It’s about as stripped down and derivative as you can get with a plot that really just relies on chestnuts of horror to do the work for writers that can’t really be creative.

With anthology films you either get a great story with some lame ones to follow (Campfire Tales), or many great stories with one flop (Creepshow); often times there aren’t very many anthology flicks that follow the middle ground. “The Willies” proves the exception.

It’s a rare horror film and one that’s pretty hard to find. It’s on DVD finally in an awful VHS transfer but you’ll be hard pressed and out of luck if you expect a special edition with restored picture and sound, that’s for sure. Maybe somewhere down the line Synapse will take a crack at it. Or Anchor Bay? It could happen, look at “Monster Squad.”

“The Willies” is sadly a film that will live on for a little while longer and probably just fade off with not many people wanting to bring it back. And that’s for good reason. It takes a bit of urban legends, a bit of campfire story atmosphere, and provides only ONE really interesting horror tale that’s pretty much just a rip off of “The Crate” from “Creepshow.”

And it features an ending that’s as cheesy as it gets, with a “The End?” capper, and a “big” cast of names including Sean Astin, Michael Bower, and James Karen who are about as dazzling as it gets, really. And just to jog your memory, it’s the hobbit, the heavy kid from “Salute your Shorts,” and the Pathmark dude who also starred in “Return of the Living Dead.” You won’t see that title in this column.

“The Willies” can provide some bonafide gaffs and giggles, and if you sit a kid down to check it out, they may gain the same pure horror out of it that I did, but the entire film feels like nothing more than an extended episode of “Tales from the Darkside,” and revolves around the promise of that one story that is the height of the film.

And of course we have a small group of kids outside their house camping out for the night until they’re interrupted by their brother Michael enters to tell them some spooky stories that is unlike anything they’ve ever heard. For a while, “The Willies” drifts along from segment to segment to cheesy dialogue (There’s even a reference to “The Goonies,” hyuk, hyuk!), with some padding that’s just outright blatant. There’s the tale of the evil carnival ride, there’s the obese lady who went to eat at a chicken place and didn’t realize she was eating fried rat, and there’s that oldie, but goody, the old woman who tried to dry her small dog in a microwave.

I love, love, love urban legends and at one point I was just addicted to them, but “The Willies” doesn’t stage these as well as films like “Urban Legend,” did. While it’s creative, the little cut aways seem like hackneyed attempts to let the film run its course before we wind down to the only two stories in the whole film, and when we do, they’re hit or miss.

Little Danny is constantly picked on by three kids who are bonafide bullies, but… yeah, they’re not so bad compared to the bullies I’ve dealt with, and the first story about the Monster in the Bathroom is a lot of fun, but poorly executed. Why does this monster have a fascination for poor geeky Danny? What sets him apart from everyone else? Is he there to help or just grab a new pet? And were the writers ever clear if the janitor (Kramer) was the monster, or just knew how to control the monster. Nonetheless, the story here is very simple. Danny is bullied, Danny meets the monster who proceeds to feed on his bitchy teacher. It all comes to an end when the bullies are lured into the bathroom and get eaten themselves, thanks to Danny who barricades the bathroom.

Surely, it’s a twisted tale, but one that’s really not as good as it could be since the whole concept of the monster is incredibly fuzzy, and Danny is so comical you eventually want to beat the snot out of him. Most importantly, wouldn’t anyone notice that his teacher and three kids are missing? The monster himself is such a horrible rip off of the Crate monster it’s rather embarrassing. He growls the same, he’s as mysterious, and his carnage is pretty similar, especially when the teacher is pulled up into the ceiling and ripped to shreds as her legs dangle wildly. The puppeteering is admirable, but still it’s tough to believe what we’re seeing, especially since the monster may or may not be the friendly janitor.

The second tale involves Gordy Belcher a disgusting, greedy, and grotesque obese lad who has a fascination with ants and flies to the point where he builds miniature diorama’s comprised of dead flies. His fun comes to an end when he buys a growth formula from a cantankerous old farmer, and inevitable the flies grow to ginormous proportions and revolt, murdering the boy. This is a segment that’s slightly more structured but not as fun since the gross out attempts work too well, to the point where it’s just difficult to finish. Bower has always had a knack for playing the disgusting fat kid, which is a compliment, no doubt, but this character is also too similar to what he’s already played in past work.

“The Willies” is a horrible movie, and one that you may either love or hate, and watching it again after buying it online really makes me think that the only reason why I want to keep it is because of nostalgia. If I’d approached this as a new viewer, it’d have suffered my scorn. It all ends with a cheesy and confusing capper as Bowen ends up *gasp* as Astin’s father, and he enters the tent showing the kids his TRUE face (the bathroom monster) which then fades out leaving the children’s fates unresolved and my eyes rolling.

“The Willies has a lot of potential, but it’s sadly just another form of proof that good anthology movies are tough to create, and if you’ve seen “Creepshow 3″ you learn that they’re not only difficult, but when they’re bad, they’re really bad.

My brother and I technically owned it on VHS for a number of years until it was stolen by a neighbor, but we still fondly remember the title and everything that it had to offer us for shits and giggles, and bits of frights here and there. Back then “The Willies” was about as scary as it got, but then… back then we loved “Howard the Duck,” so you can never tell.

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“Be Kind Rewind” is a piece of shit, a messy one with a few good bits mixed in with about a pound or two of real fecal roughage. That said, the good bits mostly involve the short amounts of video from the duo’s re-creations (if you have no idea what I’m talking about, it’ll get explained in a second), as Jack Black and Mos Def try their best to do “Ghostbusters” better’n they remember it. I remember thinking as I watched this cinematic stillborn kick its way across the screen that I would’ve been so much happier if I could’ve just watched hours upon hours of the cheap, amateur re-makes of classic films instead of the supposed “film.” Looks like I got my wish!

The press release is below, but the gist is this: the Alamo Drafthouse and Filmmaking Frenzy put together an online contest where folks could upload their best cheap re-makes of classic films, and then we could watch and vote for the winner. The press release:

Online voting begins for REWIND KINDLY- a filmmaking competition inspired by Michel Gondry’s BE KIND REWIND

AUSTIN, TX - All entries are in and online voting has begun for a Filmmaking Frenzy ’sweding contest’ hosted by The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and sponsored by AMD and Dell. ‘Sweding’ is term defined in the film BE KIND REWIND as the practice of re-creating something from scratch using commonly available, everyday materials and technology.

In the film, characters played by Jack Black and Mos Def must remake their own (cheap and truncated) versions of popular Hollywood films to re-stock the shelves of a video store when they accidentally erase every VHS tape. Using this premise, the REWIND KINDLY Filmmaking Frenzy asked aspiring filmmakers to complete an up-to-five-minute, homemade, low-budget remake of a popular Hollywood film. Well over one hundred teams registered and uploaded their remake to www.filmmakingfrenzy.com! Everything from HIGHLANDER to PURPLE RAIN to STARS WARS has been sweded by local, national, amateur and/or professional filmmakers hoping to win the first prize quad-core AMD-powered Dell workstation with a 30-inch monitor and the opportunity to have their film play before every screening of BE KIND REWIND when it opens on February 22nd at the Alamo Drafthouse. The turnout has been exceptional and the films have been extraordinary- it’s amazing how imagination can compensate for a complete lack of resources!

Beginning next week, The Alamo Drafthouse will host a series of screenings to showcase the films of all competing teams, leading up to a BEST OF REWIND KINDLY AWARDS CEREMONY on February 21st at the Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz.

All the films can be watched and voted for right now at www.filmmakingfrenzy.com.

Okay, now I’ve already watched a few (”Commando” is my fav thus far) and I strongly suggest, rather than go see “Be Kind Rewind” when it finally vomits onto your local multiplex, that you just start watching these flicks. Really, THIS is the good stuff.

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“Roy Scheider, the actor best known for his role as a police chief in the blockbuster movie “Jaws,” has died. He was 75.

Scheider died Sunday at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital in Little Rock, hospital spokesman David Robinson said. The hospital did not release his cause of death.

However, hospital spokeswoman Leslie Taylor said Scheider had been treated for multiple myeloma at the hospital’s Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy for the past two years.

Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss starred in the 1975 movie, “Jaws,” which was widely hailed as the film that launched the era of the Hollywood blockbuster. It was the first film to earn $100 million at the box office.

In 2005, one of Scheider’s most famous lines in the movie — “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” — was voted No. 35 on the American Film Institute’s list of best quotes from U.S. movies.

That year, some 30 years after “Jaws” premiered, hundreds of movie buffs flocked to Martha’s Vineyard, off the southeastern coast of Massachusetts, to celebrate the great white shark that terrified millions of moviegoers.

The island’s JawsFest ‘05 also brought back some of the cast and crew, including screenwriter Carl Gottlieb and Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel that inspired Steven Spielberg’s enduring classic.

Spielberg, Scheider, who played a police chief, and Dreyfuss, who played an oceanographer, were absent from Jawsfest ‘05. Co-star Robert Shaw, who played Quint, died in 1978.

Scheider also participated in rallies protesting U.S. military action in Iraq, including a massive New York demonstration in March 2003 that police said drew 125,000 chanting activists.”

As a hardcore fan of “Jaws,” it’s sad to know that Scheider will never be on-screen again to provide his great talents to audiences, but his memory will live on with a legacy of wonderful roles in films like “The French Connection,” “All That Jazz,” “Marathon Man,” and of course “Jaws” where he played Police Chief Brody.

Scheider was a gifted character actor, a true screen presence, and he will be missed.

Thanks for your gifts, Roy.

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If there’s one thing I was never been able to understand in my whole entire life, it’s how a large majority of the public can still be squeamish about language or nudity. What confuses me further is that the ONE thing I feel people may have a right to be squeamish about, violence, is the thing people don’t mind so much.

The FCC just proposed fining 1.4 million dollars against more than 50 stations that featured an NYPD Blue episode that showed a woman’s bare butt.

I repeat, a woman’s bare buttocks were shown and it’s going to cost 1.4 million dollars. That adds up to 700 grand per cheek. For that price you could probably rent your favorite celebrity to be your sex slave for the night.

Also, excuse me all to hell, but how could anyone be offended by the sight of a posterior?  Seriously… how? We all have one. Think about it for a minute, it’s true. Hell, I wouldn’t care if tiny little, wide-eyed, innocent, freckle faced kids saw a naked ass. They can see naked ass any time they want anyway. All they gotta do is go to the bathroom, drop trou in front of a mirror and VOILA! Asses ahoy!

The same can be said of every single other so-called “naughty” bit. Remember the brouhaha about Janet Jackson’s nipple? Did any of these geniuses who got all insulted by it bother to think that a) The female breast is basically a mound with a nipple on top and that everyone just happens to have nipples, so how can it be offensive to see something you see every day? And b) That even the cheeeelllllllllldren who saw it have seen female breasts before when they were, you know… BREASTFEEDING, especially those born from the very same simple rural folks who supposedly raised their young in the simple rural ways (which include not weaning the little assholes until they’re five) yet were 99.9% of the fucking people who complained?

It doesn’t make sense to me.

Vaginas? How can THAT be offensive? It’s the most anonymous looking thing in the world. If a vagina was a person it’d be Bruce Jenner. It literally looks like, well… nothing. If a woman doesn’t lie back and spread open her legs there’s really nothing to see and she might as well just be wearing flesh covered (or mohair if she’s going for a 70’s look) panties. Couple this with the fact that 50% of your viewing audience HAVE vaginas, and that at least another 25% see vaginas on a semi-daily basis (Especially if they mowed the lawn and took out the trash like she goddamn told them to.) And finally, if my understanding of the human gestation process is correct, a full 100% of them were real intimate with one when they POPPED out of the fucking thing when they were born.

So asses, tits and pussies are all things we’ve all seen and continue to see ALL THE TIME.  What’’s next? Being offended by the sight of a hand or an ear? Even more ironic is that the people who cringe at the sight of this stuff on TV or try to protect their kids from seeing it are the first ones to babble about the cruelty of them Ah-rab Burkas on duh Afgahni wimmen when trying to justify the cool little wars going on right now. As if the Fundamentalist Muslim disgust of the human body differs at all from their own, except for its larger scope.

So what are we left with?

Oh yes: The penis, the nastiest one of all. The friendly weapon, The shotgun barrel of fun, The angry missile, The spitting fireman, The flute that everyone can play, The schlong, The rod, The yardstick, The big Kahuna hot-dog, DA COCK-A-DOODLE-DONG! True, many a young baby girl has been semi-traumatized while taking a bath with her dad when they both stood up to dry off and, because of the height difference, she’s suddenly face to face with what looks like Fidel Castro smoking a flesh colored cigar.

But nonetheless, it’s an innocent organ; the math for vaginas applies equally to penises. 50% of viewers have them, 25% more have seen them, and if you live in a household that isn’t filled with a bunch of repressed religious assholes, 100% should have seen them because all men eventually end up naked on a hammock in the backyard “passed asleep”, as the kids say.

So what’s the big deal?

It’s just the naked body, and a naked body is to sex what an unloaded gun is to murder. One does not equal the other, no matter what the non-thinking ideologues say. So there you have it. My perfectly logical and sensible argument about why the human body should be okay to view for anyone at any time; and anyone who disagrees with me is a hysterical, irrational psychopath AND OUGHT TO BE KILLED!

Sooooo…

What are my thoughts about bad language?

Well, I think that Dick, Cock and Pussy, filthy words who have perfectly clean sounding homonyms that mean Richard, Rooster and Cat, do a really good job at killing the argument that a word is dirty because of the way it sounds. I mean, do you really expect me to believe that Snatch is only dirty if it means a vagina and not the action of stealing or taking? Please. If it’s clean enough to say “I saw that man snatch your bible Father!” then it’s not any dirtier to say “That bikini looks a little tight around the snatch.” to the wife, okay?

“But Jeremy! It’s not the word itself, or its spelling or how it sounds; it’s the sinful meaning BEHIND it.”

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh….

So why is dang, darn, shoot, fudge, a-hole, heck, flippin’ and dork okay? Because, if I may call you on your shoot and shatter your gosh darned illusions, your flippin’ euphemistic swears mean the exact same thing in your heart than the real thing; so it’s not the intent that truly bothers people either apparently.

You know what bothers them? I’ll tell you. It’s a handful of words in their very limited vocabulary that have been labeled taboo. That’s it. That’s all it is. That’s all it ever will be. If someone had told them that the word “hair” was dirty we’d all be bald THX-1138 fuckers and hair would be called “improper follicule growth”. To put it simply, they don’t like people saying things that they don’t like to hear. Right or wrong has nothing to do with it. What’s more, unlike nudity, they can’t blame their aversion of language on religion because God doesn’t speak English and there’s no list of bad words in the bible, and even if there had been they would have all originally been in Latin and no one’s spoken that bloody language since the Romans suddenly realized that there seemed to be a whole shitload of Germans coming their way with swords drawn.

What’s especially amusing is that because these rules about what words are dirty and what words are clean are so ill-thought out, haphazard and arbitrary, you can easily run circles around them.

Let me illustrate: imagine that you’re watching one of those godawful reality TV shows about people… doing… something or other… in a wacky… place… and the rapper dude who’s on every one of these things to give them “street cred” looks at the blonde whore with the fake tits and says “Hey baby, why don’t you come to my room so you can Shozzle my Nozzle?”

You immediately knew what it meant didn’t you? Yet, there’s nothing wrong with any of those words. Nozzle is not really specific slang for anything, Shozzle isn’t even a word. Yet you know he wants her to Luncheon on his Truncheon, to Snack on his Flack, to Riddle his Biddle, to Woowoo his Choo-choo, to Gazaga the Nuhglnuff.

I dare the FCC to give a million dollar fine to a show for saying that last one. I fucking dare them.

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